By David Maisel

Some radio listeners who were tuned to WDLW-AM 1330 while in
bed on a recent Sunday morning may have wondered whether they
were still dreaming. They heard a Yiddish-accented man tack on to a
commercial the message that he'd like to see that sponsor in shul more
often.

Regular listeners at 10:00 a.m. to the Ben Gailing
Show, The Freilicher Kabtzen ("The Jolly Beggar"), didn't
need to pinch themselves to know that this was for real. They know
Ben. Some of them have been listening since 1933. They can count on
the personal brand of heymish, sentimental and upbeat
Yiddish-ness that Ben delivers between the klezmer 78's,
cantorials, Yiddish theater songs and Iraeli hits that he
plays. To lead into an ardent pitch for Israel recently, Ben
improvised, intoning, "This land is mine, God gave it all to me...."

At deli brunches throughout southern New England sixtyish-year-old men
listen together to the show. Can this really be the same program they
enjoyed in their mother's or neighbor's kitchen before entering public
school and learning enough English to understand the rest of Boston
radio fare? For decades an hour long, with actors, a studio orchestra
and a soprano to share duets with Ben, the only remnants of live music
on the program now are the advertising jungles Ben composed and
sings each week on the half-hour show.

[Flash: An old tradition has just been revived, with Rosalie Gerut joining Ben for an occasional duet live from the studio.] At 88, Ben still sings like a cantor. In fact, he pitches in for an occasional Musaf at Canton's Temple Beth Abraham, where he is Cantor Emeritus.

Ben Gailing's Other Acts

It was cantorials that gave Ben his start as a performer. He sang in a shul choir in his shtetl in Czarist Poland until emigrating to America at 16. Before settling in Boston he was an actor in the Maurice Schwartz Yiddish Art Theater in New York. With other New York based Yiddish theater troupes he played the twelve-city circuit from Montreal to Cleveland. In the 1920's, the first decade of commercial radio, he had a show on WABC in New York.

Ben hasn't been only a media figure. For two summers in the '30's he was social director of the Workmen's Circle Camp in Framingham.

For decades he produced live shows in Boston, with talent both local and from New York.